Cpp Coding Standards

Purpose

Coding standards are a part of defect prevention. They gather rules, advice and best practices for developing software, especially the code writing part. Here are listed some ideas what such standards could be for developing with C++ and within the OpenOffice.org project.

Standards and Reviews

Coding standards and reviews are related. Reviews help getting to know standards and bringing them into the real life of the code. Reviews also help to improve standards and disclose needed changes.

The standards are parted into topics. Each topic is intended to cover an area that is small enough to be the focus of a code review session. The summary of rules regarding one topic should not cover more than "one page" of paper or on screen. This way one topic's summary can be printed out and be used as checklist when studying code.

Most times a summary alone is not enough to understand and discuss a rule, also there are exceptions and hints for realization. So, for each rule there will be a separate wiki page to discuss it.

Identifying Rules

Every topic and each item have an id.

Ids enable to make notes about rules (e.g. during reviews) and help when talking about them. The ids are not just cardinal numbers, but strings, because strings do not change, when other items are added or removed.

Example: FDESIGN:OneTask is the rule with the id "OneTask" which belongs to the topic Function Design with the id "FDESIGN".

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Topics by Problem Domain

Topics may appear at multiple domains.

Middle- and Lowlevel Design

• Design (DESIGN)
• Virtual Classes (VIRTUAL)
• Class Design (CLSDESIGN)
• Interfaces (IFC)
• Function Design (FDESIGN)

Classes

• Class Design (CLSDESIGN)
• Virtual Classes (VIRTUAL)
• Interfaces (IFC)
• Encapsulation (ENC)
• Class Construction, Destruction and Copying (CLSINIT)
• Function Design (FDESIGN)

Functions and Implementation Generally

• General Coding (GEN)
• Function Design (FDESIGN)
• Function Implementation (FIMPL)
• Error Handling (ERR)
• Security (SECURITY)

Preferred vs. Discarded Types and Habits

• The C++ Standard Template Library (STL)
• Type Safety (TYPE)
• Obsolete Habits (OBSOLETE)

Files, Formatting, Documentation

• Code Format (FORMAT)
• Header Files (HEADERS)
• Code Documentation (CODEDOC)

Principles and Process

• Principles (PRINC)
• Development Process (PROCESS)

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Topics in Alphabetical Order

• Class Construction, Destruction and Copying (CLSINIT)
• Class Design (CLSDESIGN)
• Code Documentation (CODEDOCU)
• Code Format (FORMAT)
• Design (DESIGN)
• Development Process (PROCESS)
• Encapsulation (ENC)
• Error Handling (ERR)
• Function Design (FDESIGN)
• Function Implementation (FIMPL)
• General Coding (GEN)
• Header Files (HEADERS)
• Interfaces (IFC)
• Obsolete Habits (OBSOLETE)
• Principles (PRINC)
• Security (SECURITY)
• The C++ Standard Template Library (STL)
• Type Safety (TYPE)
• Virtual Classes (VIRTUAL)

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